Culture & Work (Verein Kultur und Arbeit e. V.) is a registered association which was founded in 2005 as a direct outcome of an ESF-funded research project called vertikult. vertikult was implemented 2002 – 2005 with 9 European partners from research and application with the aim of developing economic services for the field of culture.

The association operates a German speaking Internet portal (www.vertikult.de ) for cultural economic services with an employment service for cultural workers, a cooperation platform and an information centre with relevant information about transfer activities from culture into market. This portal targets with its content all German speaking EU regions and minorities.

The association offers expertise in market research studies (lately done in the fields of cultural economy and cultural tourism). ACW has its own programme for supporting start-up companies in the cultural economy and companies, which want to open up new business fields. Qualifying cultural workers for the market is a special focus.

The association publishes books and brochures on cultural economic topics and supports municipalities in tourism, town marketing and regional development with instruments of cultural economy.